


Frozen 2 Death

by Saintduma



Category: Left 4 Dead, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Death, FrostIron - Freeform, Frostiron Bang 2013, Gross, M/M, PTSD, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress, Tony has no suit, Triggers, Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:49:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saintduma/pseuds/Saintduma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Left 4 Dead / Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover!</p><p>Tony survived the initial mass outbreak, which is more than can be said for some of the Avengers.  With Infected everywhere, Tony finds an unlikely ally in the imprisoned Loki.  Loki, however, was not prepared for exactly how damaged humans become in traumatic situations.  </p><p>And, well, this is about as traumatic as it gets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Prelude

Tony watched an infected man doubled over, vomiting profusely onto the sidewalk, retching and shuddering as it cleaned the contents of its stomach. He had been watching it for several minutes when he realized the infected man reminded him of Clint.

He winced, and checked his watch, a filth-encrusted Louis Moinet that had stood up to the last eight months rather beyond Tony’s expectations. It was almost six A.M., but the sunrise would be far too muddy to see any trace of for at least another half hour. The fires had seen to that, their ash and smoke clogging the air faster than even the most dire global warming predictions. The world was still burning. 

He couldn’t get the image of Clint out of his head. The indomitable Hawkeye, perched on the edge of a New York skyscraper eight months ago, firing arrow after arrow into the head of a massive, roaring infected human that was actually managing-- for at least those horrible moments-- to go toe-to-toe with the Hulk. All focus, all lethal projectiles, until suddenly-- suddenly, a coil of ropy wet tongue-- 

“Stark.”

Tony jumped, and his head swiveled quickly to meet the calculating, cool green eyes of Loki Odinson. Tony realized he was covered in a cold sweat and breathing rapidly. Loki’s cool, long fingers tangled gently with Tony’s and the fallen god wrapped his arms around the hyperventilating human, and held him tight as Tony concentrated on calming down. 

“You forgot to wake me,” Loki murmured into Tony’s hair.

“It’s barely six,” Tony managed to gasp.

“It’s quarter to eight.”

Shit. Shit shit shit. This was why they still hadn’t made it back to Malibu. Why Tony still didn’t have another goddamn suit. Losing that much time at a go was going to get them killed.

Almost had before.

“Are you certain you are sleeping adequately?”

“I’m not sure of fuck all, Loki.”

“Tony.”

“We can’t camp until I magically stop losing time, Loki, we’ve tried that.” In a farmhouse, in southwestern Ohio. That had ended... poorly.

“This is a superior location for defensibility.”

“Until we luck into a good six or seven Tanks that bash the walls in.” Tanks. Infected juggernauts of muscle, like the one that had kept the Hulk busy on Sixth Ave while Clint pumped it full of arrows until that hacking, noxious Smoker had roped its twenty-yard tongue around his ankle and--

“Stark.”

“We got to keep moving,” Tony concluded, and ignored his pulse as it jumped against the arc reactor.

Loki’s green eyes moved over Toy’s face, assessing, calculating. After a long moment, he nodded.

“We are, as you say, burning daylight.”

\----------------  
\----------------

Loki had woken six months ago into the worst of the panic. Prisons were overrun and shut down, and the one he had been in was no different. It had taken three days from waking up for the effects of the paralytic fluid he had been suspended in to wear off enough he could escape his prison-- far too late to help the clever guard that had used his supervisor’s dismembered hand to unlock the bioimprint-secured drainage system. Loki had been forced to watch the pitiful mortal change, slowly and inexorably, into a mindless infected zombie. It had greeted him, on forcing his way out of the tank, with an attempt to rip out his throat.

Unsuccessful, of course. Weakened though he was, Loki dispatched the unfortunate with ease and had attempted to escape the prison complex with the decaying supervisor’s hand. 

Bioimprint scans, he was dismayed to discover, are intelligent. And when skin is too loose and swollen with decay, it tends to reject to positively identify putrefying supervisor hands.

And then that damnable Tony Stark managed to go and rescue him-- heroically no less!-- by overriding the system and using the last energy of his suit’s gauntlet to blast through the chest of a truly psychotic infected woman that had managed to pin Loki to a wall. She was severely testing Loki’s ability to endure goring, by slicing him with foot-long razor-sharp claws. In his defense, it had only been going slightly badly for Loki; it turned out that he was capable of enduring quite a bit of goring.

A truce, then. Tony’s genius and battle competence paired well with Loki’s own battle prowess and impressive magic; it had kept them alive for hundreds and hundreds of miles and six months. 

It was, however, only luck that Tony happened to be immune to the virus.

Not all of the Avengers had been.


	2. The Farmhouse

\----------------  
\----------------

“Stark. This is preposterous. You must sleep at some point.”

“I’ve slept.” 

“You napped for less than two hours, four days ago.”

“See?”

It had been two weeks since Tony had found Loki locked in that prison. Their alliance still felt slippery. Loki pinched the bridge of his nose, drew a deep breath in, and let it out, slowly.

“Is the mortal testing your patience?” Tony’s tone was acrid.

“Yes. Yes, you are. It has been two solid weeks since you freed me and you have neither revealed to me your reason for doing so--”

“I needed the MREs in the kitchen.”

“A lie, Tony Stark! You lie to the Liesmith and expect me not to know. You insult me with transparent lies. Mock me no longer, Stark, I warn you--”

“Shut up.”

“Do not dare--”

“Seriously, shut up.”

“I will not--”

Tony covered Loki’s mouth with his hand, and Loki looked apoplectic for a moment.

And then he heard it, too.

Far off, but not nearly far enough: a deep-throated howl of boundless rage, and the pounding of earth.

“What is it?” Loki whispered.

“A Tank,” Tony replied, his voice tight with fear.

Loki’s green eyes searched Tony’s face. He had not seen this raw fear before, and it rather concerned him. No, actually, it worried him. Tony had shrugged off three Witches; a motorcycle helmet and a kevlar motorcycle jacket had given him enough time to get a quarter of a magazine into each one’s head before unloading the rest into two normal infected and a Hunter that had just leaped into the air towards him.

Tony Stark had more than proved his battle competence.

“Explain,” Loki demanded. 

“Eight feet tall or more. Very, very hard to kill. Covered in so much swollen muscle that it can literally punch holes in buildings to climb them. Doesn’t stumble no matter what you shoot it with. In-- in the beginning, one took on the Hulk for almost five solid minutes before dropping because we were all hurling shit at it. Overdeveloped sense of smell.”

The pounding was louder. That sense of smell must have locked onto them. Loki took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. 

“Well. Square up, Stark. It’s not the Hulk this one is coming for.”

\----------------

Tony was panting, and struggling against the black spots appearing at the edge of his vision. But the Tank was lying on its back, silent, and Loki had just cut one of the leaping, snarling Hunter infected in half. Tony got a headshot on one of the remaining regular infected and slumped against the wall, hoping he just looked battle-weary instead of like the few seconds from unconsciousness he felt.

Loki turned to look at him, and Tony could appreciate in the moment exactly how lucky he’d been to be able to get the psychotic war criminal by his side. Magic had made all the difference; it slowed the Tank down, tangled it, sunk it into the concrete, and gave Tony the time to unload two magazines into it before it got within fifty feet. At that point Loki had gotten between him and the gargantuan infected and dodged the thing’s grasping fists silkenly; watching Loki get up close and personal with the thing and actually drop it had made Tony a lot more confident in their chances of survival.

Maybe they couldn’t do three or four Tanks at a time, but they could survive. 

“Stark,” Loki said with a frown. There were a lot of black spots in Tony’s vision suddenly. “Stark!”

\----------------

Loki sipped at a bottle of water and frowned down at the unconscious mortal. He had been sleeping now for almost thirteen hours; surely at some point he would wake, hungry or needing to use the facilities. 

It had occurred to him, while clearing this house of infected, that he needed the mortal. Loki knew nothing about the geography of this world, and Stark had explained briefly that he had a plan that involved a seafaring vessel of some kind, and more of his technology. It was not a plan that would save this wretched husk of a world, perhaps, but it would keep them alive.

And until Loki’s magic came back in full, alive was the goal.

He had not revealed to Stark the extent to which the paralytics had messed with him. How much he was still struggling. The Tank had tested them solidly; if Stark had not had his guns, Loki would not have had the power to damage the creature enough to drop it, and keep it from crushing him. 

Loki did not like that he needed anyone, but if he was to ally with a mortal, Stark was worthy. He had been since the beginning; clever, determined, not overbearingly moral, a consummate survivor. Damaged, like Loki knew he himself was. Damaged, but functional. He was an attractive ally.

Stark made a sound in his sleep, and Loki reached down, brushing a strand of long hair from his face. The man needed a haircut. It had not been convenient for them to do such a thing.

Suddenly Stark gasped and sat up, his hands pushing and clawing at Loki’s skin, a blind panic on him. 

“Stark. Stark!” Loki batted away his hand and tried to push him down again, but the mortal was struggling hard enough that Loki was concerned that he might hurt himself in his panic. “Stark!!”

Well, this wasn’t working. 

\----------------

Tony didn’t know where he was, didn’t know who was pushing at him, and couldn’t remember the last thing that had happened. Naturally, this was sending him into a very defensive panic, as lately, everything pushing at him was trying to kill him. 

And then, quite without warning, those hands held his wrists away from his face and body, and there was a mouth against his own. He was being kissed.

He stopped, his eyes focused, and then slid closed.

The mouth was most certainly not dead, and not trying to hurt him, and he was very sure of that, though how, he really couldn’t say. He realized that he was returning the kiss.

And then the mouth retreated, and green eyes looked at him with concern, relief and-- it was clear, albeit small-- affection. 

“Are you feeling rather better, Stark?” A smirk covered that angular face, but the relief and affection was still in Loki’s eyes. That, or Tony was losing it. Or had lost it at last. Whichever.

“I’ll feel even better if you kiss me again,” Tony replied. “But let me go piss first. How long have I been asleep?” He pushed Loki back a bit and swung his legs down, out of the bed, and reached for one of the handguns by the bed. 

“Thirteen hours,” Loki replied. “And use the first bathroom on your left. I believe Caroline is using the other.”

“Caroline? Thirteen hou-- oh, fuck it,” Tony growled to himself and stumbled out of the bedroom. 

There was a teenaged woman, maybe fourteen years old, standing in the doorway to the bedroom opposite, looking away from Tony out a window into a cornfield, when he emerged from the bathroom a minute later.

“You Caroline?” he asked. She turned her face towards him, and he could see a scarred-over bite on her neck. 

“No. I’m Jamie. Caroline’s downstairs. You’re Iron Man.” Her voice was quite rough; there had been damage to her vocal chords. But she could speak. 

“Yep. Suitless at the moment. I’ll be even more ass-kick-y once I get to Malibu.”

Jamie snorted. “Yeah, real ass-kick-y, unconscious in the arms of Mr. Take Over New York,” she grumbled. “Though I’d like to know how you get a crazy criminal wrapped around your pinkie like that.”

“Like what?” Tony wanted to hear this. 

“He asked Caroline like a million times if she thought you’d be okay. I think he might even have been--”

“That is quite enough, Jamie,” came Loki’s voice, and she stopped, and smirked at the god in the doorway. 

“Crying,” she finished anyway, and turned, heading down the stairs without elegance, but very quietly. 

Loki had an annoyed expression on his face. 

“Is that true, Reindeer Games?” Tony asked, smirking at Loki, who scowled at him and stalked back into the room Tony had woken up in. “No, seriously.” He followed Loki into the bedroom, and closed the door behind them. “I’m not trying to make fun of you or anything. Were you actually worried about me that bad?”

“You are a cad, Tony Stark,” Loki sighed. “But you are the only person on this planet who has shown me any kindness, even if it has been simply to ensure our mutual survival. You are the first in a very, very long time to show me significant kindness of any kind.” He looked pained for a moment, and then angry. “Even my brother has not afforded me any measure of respect for a long time.” 

“Well, I’m not your brother, and I know when I need help,” Tony shrugged. “You’re a beast out there. Every day you have new tricks to keep us alive.” 

“That is because every day, I am getting some of my power back,” Loki replied. “Even at my fullest power, my-- family--” the word was filled with venom “--could not appreciate the gifts my magic afforded us, on the battlefield or otherwise.”

“Your family isn’t here,” Tony insisted, and moved in front of Loki, close, to make the point. “I’m here. You’re here. And outside, there are millions and millions of zombies that want to kill us. So all that shit? Isn’t relevant, here.”

Loki looked up at him, his face neutral, almost cold. “Irrelevant? Like Clint Barton’s death, irrelevant?”

Tony winced, and took a step back, looking out the window with a look on his face that told Loki that he was not present in the moment suddenly. His brows were low and creased, a slight frown was on his face, and he was breathing harder. Loki could hear the man’s heart suddenly jumping in his chest.

“Tell me what happened, Tony,” Loki said, putting his hand on Tony’s forearm and moving closer to him. “Tell me what happened so I will know how to help you.” 

Tony looked at him, confusion and fear in his eyes, as if he didn’t understand where he was at the moment. Loki frowned. Mortal psyches were... delicate. Even this man’s, who had withstood so much. 

“Tony,” Loki said again. “Tony Stark. Was I there, when it happened?”

Frowning, Tony shook his head. 

“Then you are not there now, are you?”

A hesitant nod. 

“Then tell me. Remember, but remember you are not there. Tell me.”

“Rooftops,” Tony croaked. “There was a Tank on Sixth Ave. We’d never seen one. We knew there were infected-- they were everywhere-- but we didn’t know what a Tank was. The Hulk was tangling with it. Cli-- Clint was on the roof, near, just-- pincushioning it. It still wouldn’t drop. I was dealing with other infected-- just-- fucking waves of them--” he choked, and stopped talking, horror crossing his face.

“Stark. Tony Stark.” Loki’s voice was commanding, and certain. Tony looked up at him, confused again. “Was I there, when it happened?” Tony shook his head again. “You are not there now, are you?” Tony nodded. “Remember you are not there, and tell me.”

Tony took a deep, shaking breath. His hand covered Loki’s on his forearm, and squeezed. “I was keeping them back,” he continued, voice barely a whisper. “I looked up and there was this-- one standing on the opposite roof-- it had this ridiculous tongue-- it coiled around his neck. Hacking sounds. Like a smoker’s cough. So we called it a Smoker. We-- it jerked him off the roof--” he started to get that panicked look again and looked at Loki, took a deep breath, and continued. “It jerked him off the roof and he was dead, just like that. Cracked his head on the edge of the roof and-- gone. At least it was quick.” 

“Who killed the Tank?” Loki asked quietly. 

“Hulk. No-- real trouble, in the end. Hulk takes-- Hulk took a lot more damage, much easier, than Tanks can. We-- hadn’t ever seen one.”

“What happened next?” Loki was pushing. This had screwed with Tony bad enough, long enough. If they were going to make it, they needed to sort this shit out. Now. 

“We-- cleared as much of Sixth as we could,” he said. “Then the Hulk went, and Banner was calling us all on comm. We scooped him up and headed back to the Helicarrier. He-- he was pretty fucked up. I’d never seen him carry wounds over before. It was-- it was ugly. He had this huge bite-- we could see it was infected. We started going down in shifts, to try to keep evacuation centers open-- Natasha disappeared somewhere in there. I don’t know where she went. We still don’t know. We never saw her again. She just-- poofed. Bruce hadn’t even gotten through with his blood tests. SHIELD couldn’t biotrack her and it was just-- it wasn’t worth it. The world was going up in flames. I mean-- even Stark Tower was fucked. I flew by at one point-- to see-- it was fucking teeming. I saw-- I saw--”

Loki squeezed Tony’s arm, and drew the human’s eyes to his again. “Was I there?”

“No, you weren’t there. I’m not there.”

“Remember you’re not there. Just tell me.”

He steeled himself, but Stark’s voice was tight anyway. “I saw Pepper,” he rasped. “I saw Pepper become a Witch. She was just-- convulsing. And her fingers kept growing, and popping, and growing, and popping... she was just howling-- I went down, I landed to try to help and she just snarled and screamed and ran me. I-- I had to fly away. I-- I-- I killed her. I didn’t want to see her like that. I didn’t want her to live like that.” 

Loki just nodded. He squeezed Tony’s arm again, and Tony turned towards the god and wedged himself against his chest, insisting on being held. Loki did not hesitate to oblige. If it would help-- it would help. 

If it would bond Stark closer, it would keep them alive. 

“What happened to Banner, and your Captain America?”

“You weren’t there. I’m not there.” 

“Yes.”

“We put Banner down. We slowly put him into a coma. He was infected. His fever was starting to totally rage-- too quickly. We didn’t want an infected Hulk. So we doped him until he fell into a coma, and we kept pumping him with system depressants until he died. And then we kept doing it until he had been dead for three hours. Cycled it through with a dialysis machine even though he was dead. We had to be sure. We couldn’t have an infected Hulk. I mean-- he went peacefully, I guess. Better than Clint. Better than Pep. Better-- better than any of us, I guess.” He was quiet, and Loki instinctively hugged him, consoling him. Tony didn’t have that far-away look. He looked scared, but present. 

“What happened to Captain America?” Insistent, careful, present. 

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I was trying to escort the president out with Rhodie. There was a car bomb-- radicals-- and an EMP. Took out Rhodie. Older armor. I got slammed with a Tank. Disabled the unibeam. President was lost, Rhodie too-- I didn’t hear from SHIELD again. My armor was trashed. I took a motorcycle and beat the pavement. I thought I’d be able to find someone later. I just-- crawled along. I found you eventually. I-- I survived. I hope... I don’t know. I haven’t seen SHIELD at all. I’ve tried. You know I’ve tried.” 

“You were at the prison trying to contact them?”

Tony nodded, and curled more into Loki’s arms. Loki tightened his hug as the short human curled. He wondered if this vague affection for Stark was like what Thor had felt for that Jane human. He couldn’t know. Loki could never return to Asgard. 

“Did you know I was there?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “You kept me alive from the wormhole.”

Loki froze. Tony looked up at him, brows knit. 

“Didn’t you? Keep me alive?”

Loki frowned, and began to untangle his arms from around Stark. 

“It’s-- it’s fair, Loki. I told you what happened. Tell me.” The human’s hands fastened onto Loki’s forearms, and squeezed, holding him closer. 

“It is of no consequence.”

“Bullshit,” Tony said, but it wasn’t harsh. “Tell me.”

“I did,” Loki frowned. “But--”

“Quit it with the buts,” he said. “Just say it.”

Loki frowned down at Tony Stark, the brilliant mortal, for whom Loki felt this vague attachment and affection-- almost a sense of companionship. He didn’t like telling him. It was-- so personal. 

“I was loath to lose you,” he replied. “You were admirable. Smart. Moreover-- clever. I felt... attached, despite your heroism. You could walk up to an enemy you knew to be stronger and be clever enough to survive even a death sentence. That sort of intellect should not be wasted in Niflheim.”

“You decided I was worthy.”

“I decided you were too valuable a potential resource.” 

Tony’s dark eyes examined Loki’s face closely, and something like a small smile was on his face. He was definitely present now, albeit tired, and strained. “What do you think now?”

“You are too valuable a resource,” Loki replied, measured. 

“And?”

“And.” Tony raised an eyebrow, waiting. Loki sighed, but it was less frustration, and more resignation. “And I am loath to lose you because you are a valuable companion.”

“Never had one of those before have you?”

“Shut up,” Loki smirked, and Tony laughed. 

Tony had a nice laugh.


	3. The Farmhouse, Part 2

\----------------  
\----------------

Two months passed in the farmhouse with Caroline and Jamie. It was peaceful; too far removed from an urban center to have many wanderers, and in flat enough country that any that did come around were easily spotted and dispatched with a suppressed sniper rifle. 

It was Jamie’s birthday, according to her and the older, tough but affectionate Caroline; they had been saving a cake mix, and though it was very chemical and dry to the taste, they were enjoying the evening, cleaning gun parts and arranging ammunition while Caroline told them a story from Jamie’s childhood. 

It wasn’t until that night that Tony even knew that Caroline and Jamie were related; an aunt and niece, apparently. He hadn’t been paying enough attention, honestly.

Loki had taken a lot of his attention, when they weren’t working towards survival in some way. They talked a lot. It wasn’t really random; they spoke primarily of what their lives had been like. What they missed, what they hoped to get back. Stories. Stories felt important, somehow; like the anchor to the past was a way of keeping them focused, keeping them sane. Loki spent a lot of time explaining what things on Asgard were to Tony; Tony spent a lot of time explaining various pieces of technology. They went through a lot of paper, drawing things for each other to demonstrate when words were inadequate. 

Kissing.

They tried to keep that from Carolina and Jamie, but really, in a single house, it was hard to. Loki rationalized it as a way to keep Tony attached, and present, and loyal, though secretly, it was simply because Tony was fun to kiss, and having fun was something that felt intrinsic to his nature that had not been fed in entirely too long. Tony rationalized it as a way to stay sane; Loki was stable, for all that a god of chaos could be stable, and always knew where he was, and where the rest of the world was. Secretly, he just thought he was hot, and well, Tony had spent most of his life just taking what he thought was attractive. 

A stable chaos god. Well, when the world is chaos, Tony supposed having a creature of chaos on your side was a good thing. Two negatives making a positive, or whatever.

Jamie and Caroline were laughing-- full-bodied, rocking laughter-- and Tony was laughing as well, though not quite so heartily, when Loki heard it.

A roar. 

He hushed them quickly, and listened. The color drained from Jamie’s face as the whole table strained to hear what the god heard. 

“Guns. Points. Now.”

All movement-- Tony was pulling on armored motorcycle leathers, a helmet; Jamie pulled on riot gear and was running upstairs to a mounted gun. Caroline went to the front room, where a pre-rigged set of explosives had a remote activation. 

Loki walked out onto the front porch, and waited. Above him, he knew Tony was on the roof, waiting. Covering Jamie’s rear, and ready to mow down flanks. 

There was another roar, and Loki could see the Tank, already too close, chasing after an armored vehicle that was making for the farmhouse with all haste. 

There was a pregnant moment of relative quiet, and then Jamie’s mounted gun started to spit, loading the Tank up with lead as soon as it was in range, and Tony was calmly, evenly, loading shots into the mammoth slab of swollen muscle. 

Loki waited. The vehicle was closing in; he raised his hands, and started to divert the energy in it, trying to shut it down before it got too close. He could feel it succeed, and it spun, headfirst, into the Tank, just as Jamie eased off of the mounted gun to let it cool for a moment. Tony’s rate of fire doubled, to compensate, and a green light slowed the behemoth enough for Tony’s shots to finally bring it, slumping, to the ground in front of the armored vehicle.

Loki could hear all of them take a deep breath, as the door of the vehicle opened, and a man got out. He raised his hands to the sky. He was wearing army fatigue pants and a white tank top. Loki glimpsed the red on his shoulder just a moment before Tony’s gun rang out again. 

The man dropped. 

“Tony! What the fuck!” Loki heard Jamie shout at Tony.

“He was bitten,” he replied.

“He could have been immune too!” 

“I’m not going to make that bet, not and risk you and Caroline--”

The roar that quieted them this time was not a Tank’s. It was a roar of hundred and hundreds of voices, screaming for flesh and violence. 

“Points!” Tony shouted again, and Loki’s eyes swept the horizon as he stalked around the edges of the porch, looking for the horde of infected that they could hear. 

It came. 

A tsunami of infected bodies crashed into the house, and even Caroline’s explosives-- which effectively devastated almost a third of them-- could keep them from thronging it so heavily that walls were giving out under the pounding. The howling-- the howling was the worst. This wasn’t the uncommitted moans of some horror movie. This was the howling of the infected after the rare slices of flesh in front of them. 

Loki watched Caroline be swallowed by the horde, guns blazing holes in heads fast enough to keep a circle around her just long enough for her to make eye contact with Loki, and acknowledge that she knew exactly how fucked she was before it took her.

Loki tried. 

That, maybe, was the worst; that he tried, so hard, and it didn’t matter how many of them he could hold back at the time, how far away he could drive them, how many he could drop using the ammunition sans guns as projectiles to blow infected brains over the remaining farmhouse walls. Not a damn part of that mattered. 

There were too many, and they just kept coming. 

Loki found himself on the first floor roof with Tony, trying to keep the tide away from Jamie and the gun that was carving swaths in the seething ocean of infected bodies. Loki was trying to keep the gun cool at the same time-- his entire left side was blue as frost from his hand melted and melted and melted away, the gun spitting and spitting and continuing to slowly heat up as Jamie pumped miles of lead into the unending horde. 

And then suddenly-- suddenly there were no more bullets coming out of the gun. They had run out of ammunition for it. 

Tony didn’t miss a beat; he doubled his fire, but his magazine emptied, and during the reload they surged up, somewhere Loki had not yet frozen them down onto each other. 

Jamie screamed, and Loki didn’t look. He grabbed Tony, and jumped down into the horde as it surged forward again, shoving bodies out of the way-- this way and that-- making a beeline for the armored vehicle. 

“We can’t leave her!” Tony shouted, but Jamie had stopped screaming already. Loki didn’t reply. 

It felt like they were trudging through quicksand, moving too slowly to get to the armored vehicle, but then they were there, and Loki shoved Tony inside, and closed the door. 

It was suddenly so much quieter.

The armor of the vehicle was too much for the horde outside; they beat against the bars and the reinforced glass, but nothing happened. There was a gentle drumming sound, but that was it. Tony began to try to start to hot-wire the vehicle, but Loki put his hand on the human’s. 

“Leave it,” he whispered. 

“We’ll die if we just stay here,” Tony whimpered.

“No. We’ll lay in the back, and wait for them to forget we’re here. They will. We’ve seen them get bored before.” 

Tony was quiet. 

“We should have grabbed Jamie.”

“It was too late.”

“I know.” 

Loki looked at Tony, who met his eyes. They both knew she was gone. That there had been no alternative. That nothing would have changed. And they climbed over the seats, laid flat in the back, and Loki held Tony while he shook, and quietly cried. 

And eventually, the drumming stopped, and they were forgotten. 

It didn’t help.


	4. The Fallout

It was the quiet moments, Loki had discovered, that Tony really lost it in. He was absolutely reliable in combat; Tony described it as all of the extra programs running in his brain turning off, to focus all possible processing power on getting out of the scenario alive. Loki admired it; it was a warrior fugue, like what his brother and the Warriors Three often described, but it was a smart fugue, that was more like his own. Loki liked that Tony had a full-field awareness, like himself. It was why they had survived.

But the quiet moments, like waiting, lying flat in the armored vehicle, for the twelve Tanks that had followed the hoard to the farmhouse to finally disperse, that Tony couldn’t handle. He wasn’t fighting, wasn’t working on anything, wasn’t occupied with something that he could use some of that excess processing power on. And unlike a computer that simply didn’t use the chip, Tony overheated when it wasn’t used. He got agitated. Beyond agitated; Loki could see in the man’s eyes that he was losing it. He was starting to pick at his skin, and had that faraway look that told Loki he was probably reliving losing Barton again.

“Tony Stark,” Loki whispered, reaching out to slowly pet his dark hair back from his face, trying to focus him. “Tony Stark. Where are you?”

Tony’s eyes focused, dilated, as he looked at Loki. “Here,” he whispered. “I’m here. You were there. We’re here. It happened here.” He was cracking, much quicker than Loki had anticipated. He had hoped the crying would keep this from happening-- he had hoped the fear would actually pass, and Tony would stabilize. Apparently it was too much to hope. Humans were so fragile. 

“It did,” he whispered. “But it’s not happening still. It’s over. You are safe in this moment.”

“There are still Tanks,” Tony whimpered. “They could still find us. They could crush us. Loki there will always be more Tanks and more infected and more-- and more Jamies--”

Loki held Tony firmly by his hair, trying to physically pull him back into the moment, but Tony simply began to panic more. Loki forced a kiss on his mouth, crushing at first, to remind Tony that he was there, and Loki would never kiss him if they were in immediate danger. It softened, after a moment, and when Loki could feel Tony returning it, Loki let Tony breathe. The human took a deep breath and looked at him. For a moment he seemed stabilized, but the franticness began to return, and Tony pressed another demanding kiss on Loki’s mouth, pushing the god onto his back. Loki let him; they had made out like this before in the house, and Tony had broken it up to have a cold shower, but today, trapped and waiting, Tony didn’t make any move to separate himself from the god. It was Loki who paused him when he could feel Tony’s heated erection pressing against his thigh, who pulled away from the kissing and roving hands enough to ask him with his expression whether he wanted to continue.

“I need this,” Tony rasped. “I need you. I need something-- I need something that tells me when I’m safe. I need my body to know when you have made us safe.” 

Loki nodded, and he kissed him again, and he gave him what he needed. 

\----------------  
\----------------

For Loki, it was the insane moments that those physical memories helped in. His magic was still returning-- something beyond the paralytics had intervened in keeping him from being the powerhouse he was-- and it was in moments like this, as they sprinted across a tarmac towards a plane they had spent the last six hours carefully fueling, luring hoards away, checking for damage to the fuselage, luring Tanks away, checking for electrical issues, luring away more and more hoards...

The last half hour had been dedicated to rigging an explosion on the other side of the airport terminal, to draw away the hoards and the Tanks and those goddamned Smokers that bothered Tony so much. 

It was moments like these that Loki needed those memories in. The scent memory of Tony’s sweat after fucking him senseless in an abandoned rail engineer’s office in rural Nebraska helped him dig in, pull out that next strand of power to wrap around his fist and turn the air behind them into a concussive blast, shoving back the running hoard long enough to pull the door shut, to seal it in time for a Hunter to bounce uselessly off of the fuselage. 

There was no time to sigh in relief. 

They only barely got the plane off the ground before they ran out of usable runway; there was a crashed plane at the end, and it cut off the last thirty feet, which Tony had calculated they didn’t quite need but it was very close and it was difficult to say if they could get altitude enough to not brush it with landing gear, which could fuck up any chance of a decent landing---

the sigh came when they circled slowly, turning towards the West Coast, and saw the hoard running after them, hundreds of feet below, and felt the landing gear retract completely into the plane. Tony squinted at the console, and ran his fingers through his hair and over his sloppily trimmed goatee. He looked at Loki. 

“Well. Next stop Malibu.” 

“You must be very relieved,” Loki smiled. 

“Yeah.” Loki watched him take a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was something beautiful about that relief. Something that made Loki feel relieved as well. 

“You are confident your lab will still be there?”

“I’m confident my suits will be,” Tony said with a smile. “I figured it out. With three suits I could keep them in good enough repair and in circulation that I could have west of the Rockies cleared of infected in three years. I have almost forty suits in working condition. I could code one to you, we could have a wall built, start actually locating and retrieving survivors-- ten years we could have something like normalcy back-- what are you grinning about?” Tony smiled at Loki, checking altitude and making a minute adjustment to the course. 

“You. You never-- you will never dream small, Tony Stark. And I hope you never, ever do.” He leaned over and kissed the human gently on the cheek. Tony grinned, and then glanced behind him.

“Did you hear that?” 

Loki frowned. He did. It sounded like someone was trying to cough something up. Not like a Smoker-- it wasn’t a dry, hacking sound. It was wet, and rasping. A wet keening moaned through the door. 

“What the fuck?”

That was when the acid got through the cockpit door. Loki got a glimpse of a distended jaw and a swollen stomach before a spurt of acid began to hiss through the console---

\----------------

They were falling through the air. Loki could smell the acid on Tony’s leg, just a brush of it, eating through his calf. He could hear Tony screaming as Loki wrapped his arms around him and closed his eyes. 

_I will keep you safe, Tony Stark._


End file.
